June 10, 1917 



Some time ago an enthusiastic and experienced fisherman, Henry P. 

 Wells, wrote a book about fishing rods. He was evidently an expert 

 and explained how to make tackle and how to use it. Naturally he 

 devoted much space in his book to lists and descriptions of woods 

 suitable for rod material, and he combed the whole world in an effort 

 to find the best. His choice came from tropical countries, but he 

 devoted considerable space to American trees. However, he could find 

 only five hardwoeds in the whole United States that he could recom- 

 mend for fish-rods, and one of these five he confessed had never been 

 tried, so far as he knew. That left only four woods from forests 

 containing over 400 species, that could be recommended as fish-rod 

 material. The five woods on the American list were white ash, hickory, 

 hornbean, Osage orange, and service or shadbush. For some reason 

 he overlooked mangrove which is, according to tests, the strongest 

 and most elastic wood growing in the United States. 

 Depends on Point op Vrew 



The suitabUity or non-suitability of various woods for fishing rods 

 depends largely upon the point of view. Possibly some professional 

 who is able and wUling to pay fifty dollars for a rod — and some sell 

 for more than that — will insist on having a wood from British Guiana 

 or Madagascar. That is his viewpoint. But approach the subject 

 from the viewpoint of the country boy who knows fish and can catch 

 five while the professional is getting one nibble, and the boy can 

 call off a large number of American hardwoods that make excellent 

 fish-poles. 



There seems to be a difference between a fishing rod and a fish-pole. 

 The former is what the professional uses, and it costs from ten dollars 

 up, while the boy uses a fish-pole and makes it himself without cost- 

 ing him a cent. The rod is made of numeroui pieces, finely fitted 

 and glued and wrapped together ; but the crop of fish-poles is planted 

 by nature and harvested by boys with no tool but a pocket knife. 



The best thing about fish-poles is that they are plentiful and handy. 

 The boy walks into the woods, ten steps from the stream where he 

 expects to catch a string of fish, and with his barlow he cuts a 

 slender pole, from eight to sixteen feet long; thick at the butt as a 

 walking cane, and slender at the top as a lead pencil. He can swipe 

 the limbs off in half a minute, and his pole is ready for all comers. 



The grown man sometimes wants to put away childish things for 

 appearance 's sake, but when he put's away the rural fish-pole, he is 

 putting away something which furnished him more human exhilara- 

 tion and celestial rapture when he was a boy than any fifty-dollar 

 rod will ever furnish him as a man. 



A Bill op Particulars 



The boy whose lot is cast in a strictly softwood region will prob- 

 ably be clever enough to cut some sort of pine, cedar, cypress, fir, 

 tamarack, or juniper bush for a fish-pole; but such a boy is unfor- 

 tunate though probably happy. The best poles are hardwoods, and 

 many kinds give excellent service by lasting all day at any kind of 

 fish catching from trouting to mudsuckering. One day is as long as 

 a boy wants any pole to last. Next time he goes fishing he will cut 

 a new pole and the old one will be cast aside, lineless and bookless, 

 on the gravel bar, there to season in the sun and go seaward with 

 the next freshet in the creek. * 



Yellow birch grows throughout a region of 600,000 square miles, 

 and is found on most hardwood tracts until one gets pretty well 

 down south. The seedling yellow birch is perfect. It is tall, tough, 

 slender, and when six or seven years old it makes an ideal fish-pole, 

 with no process of manufacture further than cutting it down and 

 trimming off the limbs. The best is grown in dense thickets where 

 each seedling shoots straight up toward the sky to give its leaves a 

 sweep at the light. At least half a dozen kinds of birch are ideal 

 material for fish-poles. All of them delight to grow in thickets, and 

 that gives them their excellent form. If a boy can get into a thicket 

 of birches he seldom goes elsewhere for a pole; but birches are not 

 always available, and it is then fortunate that seedings and cions of 

 many other kinds are within reach. 



The alder is not quite so strong, slender, and shapely as the birch, 



but it is some lighter and is much more abundant in some localities; 

 and it is a safe bet that enough fish have been caught witli alder 

 poles to make a story big enough to ruin the reputation for truth of 

 any one who should quote the figures. The alders and birches are first 

 cousins in the tree family, and the boy who does not know both of 

 them at sight is a poor authority on fish-poles. 



Willow is pretty limber, but it wiU bend to the form of a comet's 

 orbit without breaking, and a fish, when once the proper connection 

 has been madfe, is as certain to come ashore as it would be by the 

 aid and instrumentality of any other kind of pole. 



Witch hazel has never cut much figure in the business world, but 

 many a witch hazel fish-pole has augmented the truant boy 's string 

 of forbidden fruit down the creek in the first warm days of spring. 

 Down South where witch hazel is scarce and scrubby, its cousin, the 

 famous red gum, is cut short in its career and lifts fish from the 

 ' ' Swanee ' ' river and other southern streams famous in song and 

 story. However, the red gum fish-pole is thick for its length and pos- 

 sesses little of the grace belonging to its little hazel relatiye. The 

 fisherboy takes it only as last resort; but often the last resort is all 

 there is. to take. In tte northern states the baby black gum, which 

 is of no earthly kin to red gum, is fish-pole stock by many a pond 

 and swale. 



If the choke cherry or fire cherry could talk it could a tale unfold 

 that would excite the envy of all. Boys going fishing draw freely upon 

 cherry thickets for poles. It is an outcast tree, a vagabond, a hobo of 

 the woods. It comes up on burnt tracts, the little seedlings standing 

 as crowded together as hairs on a hog's back. Where one fish- 

 pole is found, a thousand others are near by, and so close together 

 are they that they shoot up tall and slender. 



No person looking at a good-sized blue beech tree would mentally 

 associate it with fish-poles, for it is an uncouth specimen, with angular 

 bole, and branches flaring in every direction. No part of a mature 

 blue beech is straight enough for a fish-pole a yard long. But the 

 baby blue beeches are wholly different in form. They are tall, 

 graceful and nearly limbless, where' they grow in thickets. They 

 make faultless fish-poles, and since these beeches grow on the banks 

 of streams, they are usually handy to the hand of the lad who has an 

 eye single to something useful. Nobody knows why a blue beech is 

 so symmetrical and graceful when little and so crooked and outland- 

 ish when large. 



The professional fisherman whose book is' referred to above, recog- 

 nized service or shadbrush as fishing rod material ; but he can hardly 

 claim that discovery. The barefoot boy beat him to it long before. 

 Shadbrush fish-poles may be seen by scores on the banks of creeks and 

 brooks wliere lads use them and throw them away. This bush adver- 

 tises itself. It is an early bloomer in the spring, and its banks of 

 flowers are white as snow and conspicuous from afar. The boy who 

 wants a shadbush fish-pole during the early warm days, goes straight 

 to the snowy puff ball on the hillside and cuts what he wants. 



Nearly one hundred and fifty different kinds of thorn trees grow 

 in this country, and the only one of them which seems ever to be cut 

 for fish-poles is the red haw. It makes a beautiful pole. Its bark is 

 the color of silver, and its top is long and slender. . It is one of the 

 heaviest woods of our region, but red haw is so slim and so strong 

 that a few ounces of pole sufBce to land fish of sizes equal to almost 

 any met within an ordinary man's lifetime. 



There is no use in trying to list the eligible fish-pole material in 

 the hardwood regions, if speaking from the viewpoint of a boy in the 

 country. He can cut a pole of almost anything. Some kinds are 

 better than others, but if nothing better happens to be in sight, the 

 experienced fisherlad can cut a tolerable fish-pole from buckeye, bass- 

 wood, cucumber, sycamore, sourwood, ninebark, nannyberry, mul- 

 berry, hercules' club, spice bush, or as a last resort a dry elder 

 will do. 



When professional fishermen make the statement that only four 

 or five American woods are suitable for fish-poles, the suspicion is 

 aroused that those fishermen were never boys living in the country. 



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